life is great, except for one small thing….

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I hope you guys will forgive all the “moving forward” themed titles for my blog posts, but I feel so good about what I accomplished this week.

So, what’s the update?

Well, as you know, I found out about the Managed Infertility Program on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I actually talked to my case manager, who I will call A (hopefully for AMAZING, but we’ll see, right?). She and I had a nice conversation, although I was kind of on edge both because of the subject matter and because of the fact that I was borrowing a colleagues office to take the call (I am in a cube…sigh.)

So – information so far. This insurance is likely to be better than my previous insurance in terms of out-of-pocket cost. We have a high deductible plan, but my work pays for 80% of the deductible, so that’s great – it’ll be about $600 out of pocket for us (outside of our regular contribution to the plan which is less than what we were paying before). After that it’s 90/10% coinsurance, which means we pay 10% of the negotiated rate of the insurance, up to another interval amount (which work doesn’t help with, so that’ll be a little more painful), and then after that it’s 100% covered.

Unlike my old insurance, they will cover treatment up through IUI. So that means, as many IUIs as they think necessary (so it requires their approval…) but no IVF stuff. It’s possible that they would cover IVF drugs, but I have to find out from the pharmacy people, since A doesn’t deal with that stuff.

Bottom line: it will still cost us money, but likely less than what we would have paid with the other plan, and the coverage lasts for longer.

She also gave us information on their “Centers of Excellence,” which as far as I can tell mean the largest clinics in NYC. One of them is close by work, but the reviews are consistently terrible, and their SART data is worse than the clinic I want to go to (29% v. 36% live births for my age group). There are other, very well regarded clinics in the program, but the transportation issues in NYC are very real – I could spend an hour or more each way, and I just don’t have time for that, at least at this point. My case manager did make a point of saying that I could get a second opinion at any point, with no hassle – like always, I’d just have to tell her that I have an appointment. So that makes me happy.

Of course, the only time-critical bit of this is that I’m likely to only keep this job until my husband graduates from school – so sometime after June 2015. Hopefully, I’ll be pregnant long before then!! Given all my progress, and my research into the other clinics, I did make an appointment at the facility I wanted – March 20 at 1:30PM. We’re leaving for a trip that day as well, which is also stressing me out, so I thought I would combine stressors, lol. We’ll see how well that works/if it just drives me completely crazy.

The receptionist over the phone was very nice – I just need to bring my medical records (which we requested to be sent to me from the other doctor), my insurance card and my ID. I’m also considering bringing a summary coversheet with all the information – not because I don’t trust him but because I want him to get the full picture, and I know how busy these doctors are. So we’ll see how that goes – if I decide to do it, and what information I decide to include, etc. I feel like it could be helpful, though. I’ll let you know what I come up with.

So – how’s that for stepping forward? 11 days until my appointment!

Oh, and one lat thing I wanted to leave you with – last night, my work had it’s spring fundraiser. I was kind of dreading having to be there, but I ended up having a good time. They presented an award to a volunteer, who is also helping with the capital campaign to renovate the building we just purchased, and he said this at the end of his speech.

When you’re dealing with a big project, as we are with this building project, I have always said: Do what you can and let God do the rest. We have to do our part, as best as we can, and then have faith.

Called the doctor I want, and was given a phone number for my insurance company.

Apparently, I have a managed infertility program through my insurance. Awesome. In one to two business days, I will get a call from a nurse, presumably to make sure that I am actually infertile (yup), and then go from there.

Okay, I can deal with this. It’s a little detour. And maybe something called managed infertility will make me feel less like I’m floating out alone.

Maybe not, but one can hope, right?

Edit: Description of the plan from a web search, because now I’m obsessing over it:

Managed Infertility
This program is a comprehensive risk-bearing solution that provides guidance from a nurse specialist, pre-certification for the individual/family, claims processing and peer-to-peer consultations. This solution is designed to help individuals navigate the complicated and often stressful aspects of infertility services. In addition to intensive specialized clinical case management and a Center of Excellence network, your organization can eliminate the volatility of infertility spend for predictable and stable premiums.

I don’t care how annoying. I mean, I do care, but I can’t keep using that as an excuse.

We emailed my old doctor and got the forms moving for getting all my records from them.

I emailed our insurance broker yesterday to say that I hadn’t gotten our new cards yet. She ordered another set of new ones for us, and reminded me that I could download temporary cards online, which I did and printed out.

I looked up the doctor’s office I want, and I think I picked a doctor — I’ve known for a while which office, but they have multiple doctors and I wasn’t clear which I wanted.

I am going out of the office later today, and I could snag five minutes to call when I have the relative anonymity of a coffee shop.

This has to move. I keep waiting for something – mostly, I think, for my body to work the way it’s supposed to. But it’s not. And everyone around me is getting pregnant, and although it’s not every time, some of them totally destroy me.

I don’t have time to be this upset about it – there are at least parts of this that I can change.

It’s hard, because life has been really emotionally exhausting lately, but I can’t keep letting that stop me. Sometimes, it’s a good check when things are really overwhelming, but it means that when I have the window, I have to go for it.

I wish this could all be normal. That it would have worked like it was supposed to and then we could have just continued on with life. But it hasn’t, so I have to keep moving. Or get moving.

Rather than letting the fact that this is two years since we started trying, and a relatively close friend who got married less than six months before we started trying is pregnant, stop me, I have to use it as motivation. Or I will be where I am, because there is nothing else happening here.

I’ve been thinking about schedules a lot this week. My last graduate school class starts this week, and thus I feel the pinch, again, of working full time while also being a part-time student. Luckily, this’ll be the last time we have to deal with it.

The problem, of course, comes in that work has given me a special dispensation about my schedule – I’m still working my hours, but it’s on a modified schedule, and I have a coworker helping me cover the times that I’m gone. And then the idea is that I would also be going for RE appointments. Or really, just the one. I really just need to schedule one and get it over with, but I think I have a raging fear of it being somehow the straw that breaks the camel’s back. And of course, the RE I’ve chosen, although close to both home and work, only has daytime hours. For some reason, the ones that are both reasonable and nearby in Manhattan only have daytime hours. I’m guessing there are enough patients that it doesn’t matter. Who knows.

But I have a ton of fear. That my boss will not give me the time, or give me a hard time about it, or any other twelve hundred things. That they would want some kind of explanation of the need for doctor’s visits. I mean, I can lie – the first, at least, could be a regular check up. But who wants to lie?

The process of dealing with needing help. I’m having a really hard time with the idea of needing to see a doctor, not even really about the procedures – I’ve read a lot online, I have a pretty reasonable idea about almost anything they might want to do.

That despite all the help, we’re going to end up back here, no baby, poorer, and still facing down something like adoption. Which isn’t bad, but that’s not the road we started on.

Just gotta suck it up and do. And let the scheduling stuff work itself out. Maybe.

This is also my social anxiety at its worst. Having to pick “the right” doctor, and then scheduling with them, and blah blah blah. UGH.

Today is also mikvah day – a ritual immersion that allows me to have sexual relations with my husband, and something I usually really enjoy. It’s just gotten harder and harder and harder as the time goes on. You don’t go when you’re pregnant (except sometimes women go in the last month of pregnancy) and so, each time I go, it feels just a little more like a failure. Ugh. I’ve cried the last several times I’ve been – in the preparation room. Sigh.

ETA: As I was writing this, my amazing husband was contacting my old RE that we can’t use because of insurance (although we wouldn’t have used him anymore anyway…) so we are underway for getting my records from them. That’s a huge relief too. I’m also really curious to see my chart as well!

I have had some stomach bug that has been going around our office since like, Monday.

Seriously, having a stomach complaint at the end of the 2WW and then having AF arrive, and then having the stomach thing continue?!? Yeah, so not cool.

Since I was home sick yesterday, I called the new RE. And got the run around because it’s new insurance – apparently, my card says one thing, but the plan is actually called something else. Long story short, the office closed before I figured that all out. UGH.

Otherwise, it’s been a crazy few weeks – we were on vacation, and got stranded at the airport trying to get home. I’m sick, my husband’s sick, work is crazy, and my grad school class starts in like, ten days. Yay.

We also lost my pseudo-grandmother. She wasn’t really my grandmother (all my real grandparents have been dead since 2008) but she was the woman that my mom had sort of taken on as a mom, and had filled those roles for us as I was growing up, since there weren’t many grandparents and they were far away anyway. She’d been ill for ages, with one thing or another, but then she fell and broke her hip – and that was the end. Very sad. I really wanted to share my baby with her, rather than having her as someone to name after. Sigh.

DH and I are overscheduled. We’re so overscheduled that we have started implementing meetings to talk about stuff together, because otherwise, stuff never gets talked about.

On the docket today was infertility stuff. We’re still trying to get the insurance stuff for my new job set up – the HR department leaves A LOT to be desired – but it just brought up a lot of crap that I hate.

It’s hard. He feels it in a very different way than I do. I have rearranged my life in a way that he has not, I have changed the way I eat in a way that he has not, etc, etc. All of those things that make this a really different experience for him than for me. And although I’m in therapy, honestly, I could probably only talk to her about this and that would take up all our session time and then some. And there are other things I need to talk to her about.

I’m not feeling very hopeful this cycle. And honestly, given the way my cycles are falling out and when I become eligible for health insurance through work, it’s not going to be until yet another cycle after this one (at least 6 weeks) before we are able to see a doctor. It’s so old – I feel as though we’re treading water, and I just want to be moving already before we start to drown. A good friend of mine is due in March and I am going to have such a hard time if we’re not even begun to be pregnant by then. And I don’t think we will.

I hate being stuck in the quicksand at the beginning while everyone else gets to run the race. The race might be hard, but at least you’re moving. Meanwhile, all of us “fertility challenged” are hanging out in the quicksand trying to figure out how the hell to get out. Ugh. What a metaphor, but it’s my favorite one that I’ve found so far.